Samurai Posts

The History of Barry Blair and Aircel

Barry Blair was born in Ottawa Canada, long ago.

Early on, Barry got a job as a kid working on a Local TV show “You Cant Do That On Television” before Nickelodeon purchased it. Shortly after, Barry started doing Aircel Comics in Canada in the late 1980s after the insulation company he was working in lost its funding. They had this big warehouse with nothing to put in it so Barry invited his friends to come and make it a studio and he convinced the owner to turn it into a Comic book business.

Aircel  turned out a lot of titles in its time including but not limited to, Elflord, Samurai, Dragonring — Dragonforce, Warlock 5, Gun Fury Stark Future and a batch of others that came later.

Aircel then began publishing through Malibu Graphics in Hollywood for a time and Barry started doing some adult comics with them like Leather and Lace. They sold well and Barry was happy for a few years.

While Barry was convention hopping, at the Pennsylvania Hotel , he met Colin Walbridge. A bond was forged and they started self publishing together and Barry restarted his company Nightwynd productions.

It was around that time Barry went back to Asia again to spend time in Taiwan with some friends. He traveled around the China Sea and visited Macao, stood on the battlements of the Spanish fort and looked into Red China. He was the contactacted by The Pinis, who wanted him to be managing editor of their Elfquest comic company Warp Graphics (Wendy And Richard Pini WARP). So it was back to America and off to Poughkeepsie New York for a really great time in his life.

Poughkeepsie was great to Barry and he forged some good friendships there with young talent like Mat Nastos, Delfin Barrel and more. He spent a few years helping Richard run Elfquest. During this time Colin andBarry wanted to get back to doing their own stuff again and started into self publishing and doing some work for various Hollywood productions. They were even featured in the movie Bicentennial Man. If you look at the punk girl’s bedroom in the movie, you’ll see Elflord and Samurai posters. Barry also did the Comic series for Stargate and many more Hollywood focused work.

Doing the work for Warp, Hollywood productions and art assignments as well as conventions began to wear on Barry and he and Colin decide they had enough They decided to just ditch the whole rat race and go live on a mountain somewhere to draw and create.  And that’s what they did!

With the help of  Santos Aleman, their new business manager and sales rep. Barry finally just got to do what he loves—draw. The idea of someone else dealing with all the crazy stuff really appealed to Barry. So at that point Barry hooked up with his company Sanmania Productions and started their new studio Realmwalkers, named for the online World of Warcraft guild his niece Kimmi runs.

Recently Barry has hooked up with his old friend Mat Nastos.  Nastos and Nifty Comics have acquired all rights to Barry’s catalog of material from Aircel, Night Wynd, Sirius and more!  They have some very nice and personally exciting projects lined up that Barry is sure that his longtime followers will like and hopefully entertain some new readers along the way.

August 25, 2010 | No Comments

Aircel Comics Are Officially Available on Drivethru Comics

Nifty Comics is giving 2010 a big wet kiss!

Aircel comics, one of the first independent comic book companies of the late 1980’s is back! In August, Nifty Comics acquired all rights to the Aircel comics publishing library and is bringing the work of Barry Blair and his crew of talented creators to a new generation of readers.

As one of the leading black and white comic book publishers, Aircel introduced the world to such gifted comic creators such as Barry Blair, Dale Keown, Pat McEown and Guang Yap.

Aircel published hundreds of comics, including the critically acclaimed Elflord, Warlock 5, Gun Fury, Samurai, Dragonring–Dragonforce, the Walking Dead, Maelstrom, Leather & Lace, Warlocks and much more. These titles were popular in the American indie circle as well as Europe for their stylized artwork and intense storylines.

Nifty comics is restoring and reprinting a bunch of the Aircel Comics titles for sale as digital downloads, (for mobile and web) as well as publishing trade paperback compilations of the most famous series.

From December 28th-January 3rd, you can download for FREE issue number 1 of these classic Aircel titles: Dragonring, Elflord, Warlock 5, Samurai and Gun Fury series on Drivethru Comics.

You can access the free downloads on Drivethru Comics HERE

This will begin a monthly publication to Drivethru comics for these specific titles.

Nifty has also partnered up with Panelfy for the Iphone and the entire Dragonring Volume 1 is available on there right now.

www.panelfly.com

www.niftycomics.com

January 4, 2010 | No Comments
  • Blindside by Marat Mychaels and Mat Nastos - coming in 2012!